His Vanished Star

XVI.

JASPER LARRABEE stood transfixed, gazing at that tremulous, luminous astral presence with a strange superstitious thrill at his heart. It hardly seemed merely a star, so alien to his mind was its aspect in the erst untenanted spaces whence it blazed, so freighted with occult significance. Had the moment been charged with some wonderful apotheosis, some amplification of its pure white lustre into the benignant splendors of a vision of angels, the transformation could scarcely have exceeded the capacities of that breathless, insistent expectation which the ignorant mountaineer lifted toward it. For his was a simple faith, and his untaught mind had learned no doubts.

And had never these nights of ours communion with celestial pursuivants ? Did never the flutter of an angel’s wing illumine far perspectives that darkle heavily over the earth ? Was this rare fluid, which we call the air, so dense; were its sensitive searching vibrations, known as waves of light and sound, so dull, that it should feel naught, reveal naught, when the angel of the Lord flashed through the stars and the wind, through blossoming woods or bleak snows of deserts, and into the haunts and the homes of men ?

So many had come! He did not know that they were alien to the nineteenth century, and that the most spiritual-minded of to-day would account for their sudden vision as from prosaic natural causes, — as mental aberration, or the distortions of a diseased fancy, or the meaningless phantasmagoria of somnolent cerebration. To him it seemed that they had been with man from the very beginning; and why should thenpresence here be stranger than his own ? Their very numbers served to coerce credibility. So many had come ! To kings, to wanderers in the wilderness, to prophets, to children, in dreams and in the broad daylight, they came : to stand with a gleaming sword before the gates of Paradise, and to sing in the starry advent of a new day, — Peace on earth, good will toward men ; to bring the immortal lilies of the Annunciation, and to tread the ways of the fiery furnace ; to touch the bursting bonds of saints in prison, and to roll away the stone from the sepulchre of all the world; to minister to the Christ alike in the shadows of Gethsemane and amongst the splendors of the Mount of the Transfiguration !

He was trembling in every limb, as the scenes trooped out before him in the vivid actuality of his recollections of the pages of the much - thumbed volume which he had left behind him when he had fled from the still in the Lost Time mine. He sank down upon the rocky verge of the precipice, amongst the clinging verdure of its jagged crevices. Some sweet-scented herb sent out its delicate incense under the pressure of his hands. A drowsy twitter of half - awakened nestlings came from the feathery boughs of a cedar-tree that a niche in the cliff hard by half nourished, half starved. The melancholy antiphony of the voices of the wilderness rose and fell in alternating strains, and at long intervals in a vague undiscriminated susurrus the night seemed to sigh.

He heard naught; he heeded naught. His unwinking gaze was fixed upon the wondrous star in the heavens, with that thronging association of angelic ministrants so definitely in his mind that he might have thought to see an amaranthine crown expanding from the rayonnant sidereal points, or the outline of a nearing pinion stretched strongly to cleave the ether. For so many had come!

But no ! His imagination could compass no such apotheosis. The star remained a star. The exaltation of that moment of wild, vague, and breathless expectation exhaled slowly. A poignant sense of loss succeeded it. The prosaic details of the actual outer life pressed once more on his realization. He looked about him on the sombre wilderness, the black surly mountains, the itinerant mists, heedless whither, the steely glimmer here and there of the ponds where the water made shift to catch the reflection of the sky amidst the dun shadows, and sighed drearily with the sighing night.

He was penniless, shelterless, his life at the mercy of any chance that might favor his crafty enemy, his confidence betrayed by the fugitive whom he had succored, his liberty endangered, already a criminal in the eyes of the law, — an outcast, in truth, within a league of his home. From the nullity of the begloomed landscape the glance naturally rebounded, and the very obscuration of the earth lent glister and definiteness to the wonderful precision of the march of the constellations, as, phalanx after phalanx, they deployed, each in its allotted space and sequence, toward the west. And again his eyes dwelt upon that new splendor in the midst of them. How strange that it should suddenly blossom whitely forth among these old, old stars that had lighted the bosky ways of the garden of Eden ! How strange that the sight of it should be vouchsafed to him — and why !

His pulses were tumultuously astir. All at once the thought that had been slowly framing itself in his mind took definite form. He wondered if it could be a sign for him, and of what!

In the arrogations of poor humanity of the higher things, in the infinite breadth of the claim of an immortal soul, vast incongruities meet. The extreme might seem reached in the ignorant mountaineer, the moonshiner obnoxious to the law, the poverty-stricken laborer, seeing with the wild preëmptions of fancy this star, all newly and miraculously alight in the sky, as charged with some mysterious relation to his infinitesimally petty and restricted life. But once admit the idea of an immortal spirit, heir of all knowledge, made a little lower than the angels, to be crowned with glory and worship, the climax of development, and even the splendors of the star are as naught.

Larrabee had no cultivated sense of comparison, His tenacious nature laid hold upon the idea of an intimate personal intention, a sign in the heavens, with a blunt and stalwart appropriation.

He rose swiftly to his feet. So different a spirit animated him that it seemed a different path from that which he had trod as he had plodded slowly up the mountain, with hesitating steps and frequent uncertain pauses. Now he went deftly down the rugged and far darker way, brushing amongst bushes and vines, and beshowered with the perfumed drops that his hasty transit shook from their boughs; swiftly slipping through the shifting mists that now hid the sky, and again revealed the glister of that great star amidst a myriad others at the vanishing point of a perspective of seemingly precipitous white ascents, as the uncertain light cleft the glimmering vapors. He looked up to it, as it were, through a defile between these impalpable white cliffs, from the dark abysses of the night; and then the gauzy medium interposed, and without the faint light of the stars the night was black again. His pace did not slacken. He went forward as confidently in the darkness as if he were led by the definite capacity of sight, trusting to that instinct of woodcraft almost as keen as sense itself. Sometimes, indeed, his foot struck against a branch, torn by the wind from the trees and left to wither in the rugged path ; or the splash of a pool beneath his inadvertent step broke the silence of his journey, as these unaccustomed incidents of the way asserted their presence as obstacles. He never hesitated, nor doubted, nor deviated. He seemed led through the darkness by his will. He was aware in some mysterious sort of the looming propinquity of great trees or the locality of jagged rocks ; he avoided the verge of cliffs and abysses with that keen, accurate discernment of an unascertained faculty, as a somnambulist might have done. As far as his recognized intelligence was concerned, he was down in the Cove before he knew it, for the way was still sloping, the footing rocky and uneven. A long slanting burnished gleam of orange light appearing suddenly before him, revealing the white mists, and making the darkness a definite visible blackness rather than merely charged with a sense of sightlessness, he deemed only one of those transient lines of lightning reflected in the temporary ponds that he had marked earlier in the evening. It did not flicker, however, and die away. As he stared forward, he perceived, beyond a darkly lustrous interval, a parallel line of yellow brilliance,—another, and still another; and he became aware that he was amongst the workmen’s shanties, the lights of which were mirrored in the water. Presently illusory shimmering squares were visible in the mists which marked the open doors. A croaking frog by the waterside ceased suddenly, as, with more decided step, Larrabee skirted the pool and approached. He felt rather than saw the shadowy creature’s leap from before his foot, again an elastic spring along the margin, and a splash as the frog jumped into the water, and the long lines of gilded light were broken into a thousand concentric shoaling curves. Voices sounded close at hand, and then the whole little settlement became vaguely visible, — the cabins further apart than they had seemed at the distance ; a banjo was strumming at the most remote, and as Larrabee walked up to the nearest, boldly, in the avenue of light that the open door blazed out in the darkness, he saw within the man whom he sought, bending his frowning brow over a paper in his hand. In the other hand Kenniston held a cigar, which at long intervals he put between his lips; then he pulled energetically at it as if merely to keep it alight, and with no definite experience or expectation of nicotian solace. The county surveyor, on the contrary, on the other side of the table, puffed his pipe systematically, his eyes half closed, his grizzled bearded face showing in repose amongst the wreaths of smoke, his conscience discharged of every detail of the great science of mensuration which he sought to apply to the various parcels of land owned or claimed by his fellow-man. He had answered so much at random the occasional remarks of his host on the subject of the processioning that it became very apparent to Kenniston that he did not propose to work at his vocation out of office hours, as it were. From the consideration of futility as well as decorum, Kenniston had relapsed into silently comparing the calls of the deed with the notes he had made of the day’s work, and only unconsciously did an interjection of irritation and disgust escape him.

“I ain’t responsible for any disputed p’int, Mr. Kenniston.” said the Surveyor, sibilantly sucking his pipestem, his eyes quite closed, his feet upon the fender of the little stove. “Ye kin hev a jury o’ good and lawful men ter exanimate an’ decide upon it; my business is ter run the line ’cordin’ ter the calls an’ the compass. That’s all ! ”

Kenniston looked up, a sarcastic comment in his eyes ; the mere possibility of submitting the question of the boundary of his land to the wild will of a jury of mountaineers, qualified by the surveyor, according to the law of processioning land, and met in those tangled precipitous woods to discriminate in matters mathematical and to settle questions of topographical fact, seemed to him so happy a travesty of the theory of law and justice that he could not forbear a scornful smile at his own probable plight when he should come forth from such unique adjudication of his interests.

“There’s no disputed ’p’int,'” he said, laughing satirically. “ It’s the whole confounded line from the Big Hollow Boulder to Wild Duck Falls! ”

“ ’Cordin’ ter the calls an’ the compass,” muttered the surveyor, fast succumbing to the unholy fascinations of a dream in which he found that in seeking to ascertain the area of a triangular body of land be achieved the petrifying result of transforming it to a square. Reason revolted ; he woke with a snort, filliped off the ash from his pipe, adjusted himself anew in his chair, looked very wide awake, to be overtaken again by the same irreconcilable process and result.

In the diversion of Kenniston’s attention he had lost the run of his ideas ; he paused, puffed his cigar into a glow, pushed his chair slightly back from the table, glanced with lowering disaffection at the slumbering surveyor, and then mechanically about him at his surroundings.

The house was the roughest of shells, and hardly compact enough to withstand the floods of rain that had descended upon it to-day. In one corner the floor was still damp, the eaves outside dripped. Beyond a cot, a table, and a few chairs there was no furniture save Kemiiston’s valise, his gun in its case, which was never opened, and a monkey stove, an object of aversion to its æsthetic owner ; for, despite its utility, its outline and atmosphere were a continual affront to him, and it suffered grossly from the comparison with the great open fires of the mountaineers’ hearths, the incense of hickory and ash and pine, the flash and flame and sparkle of those humble illumined interiors.

The shadowy figure of a man standing in the doorway Kenniston did not immediately notice. Beyond a slight start, a mere matter of nerve (for he could hardly be surprised by aught that the mountaineers could say or do), he did not betray the unexpectedness of the apparition. He smoked silently, eying the intruder without salutation, as if he sought to shift the discourtesy of the lack of formality upon one who merely paused at the door of his domicile and surveyed its occupant; it was his rule not to encourage the mountaineers to come about, and he felt at liberty, with so untutored a folk, to depart from the rules of decorum in such small matters, which were, however, exigent even with them. In this instance no offense seemed to be taken, no intentional lack perceived. Larrabee stood, his smiling dark eyes scanning Kenniston with a steadiness which apparently had other actuation than mere curiosity ; his pale clear-cut face, his red hair, his alert strong pose, distinct in the crude white light of the unshaded kerosene lamp. Whether it were the natural commendation of a face and figure regularly handsome by the line and rule by which Kenniston was wont to apportion beauty ; whether the exaltation of the discovery of the star, the spiritual audacity of the abrogation of a personal intimation in its manifestation, had touched Larrabee’s expression with something strange, something aloof from the day, the time, and the people, Kenniston’s jaded interest was stirred.

“ Did you want to see me ? ” he demanded, at length. “ Then come in.”

Larrabee remained at the threshold, but he leaned against the wall, his big brown hat on the back of his head, as it rested against the rich veined amber and creamy tints of the yellow pine wood.

“ Air you-uns the stranger-man ez, hev been hyarabouts, building the hotel an’ sech ? ” he asked slowly.

Kenniston’s eye became intent, hardening as he nodded. His thoughts flew instantly to that fair edifice and the collapse of all his plans, with the quick inference that here was information to come touching the incendiary. He felt his blood leap ; by his pulsing veins he knew how it was burning into his face. He had that desire toward justice which should animate every civilized man, but although he sought to hold himself impartial, calm, circumspect to receive what might be a false accusation, it would have fared ill with Larrabee’s enemy had he had an old score to settle thus.

As he remained silent Kenniston spoke, with a view of urging forward the disclosure. “ Have I ever seen you here before ? ”

Larrabee shook his head. “ I hev never viewed you-uns ez I knows on.” Then, after a pause, “ Air you-uns a book-l’arned man ? ”

“ Reasonably so,” Kenniston said, with a slight laugh. He leaned his elbows on the table, holding his chin in his hand, which was half obscured by his full beard, and while he looked impatiently at his visitor his white teeth gnawed his underlip.

Larrabee hesitated. “ Hev ye met up with the stars in yer readin’ ? ” he finally blurted out.

A sudden look of blank disappointment crossed Kenniston’s face.

“Stars!” he echoed in dismay, “ Why, I thought you had come to give me some information about the cur that set fire to my house.”

(It was a different kind of brute, but the fact of Bruin’s agency was relegated to the state of things not revealed, which we denominate mystery.)

It was Larrabee’s turn for impatience, and an affronted sense of interruption.

“ I dunno nuthin’ ’bout who burnt yer hotel ” — He paused suddenly, the conviction all at once fully fledged in his mind that it was the deed of the moonshiners, to rid the Cove of its prospect of troublous invaders. The recollection of Espey’s threat rang in his ears as if the very vibrations of the words were audible upon the air : “ Burn him out! Burn his shanty every time he gits it started ! ”

Larrabee suffered the sense of a nervous shock, so great was the revulsion from the subject that had engrossed him ; for this reminiscence of all things he had least expected to meet here. He could hardly cope with it in the free outer air. It belonged so essentially to that other life of his, that underground world where he bore so different an identity, that it seemed to have thoughts and intentions and a conscience peculiar to itself. He had realized the dangers of the isolation in which he stood amongst those of his association, but he had thought himself safe here. Kenniston knew him neither by name nor face, and he was a stranger to all the workmen ; since their advent into the Cove he had been held a prisoner in the Lost Time mine. Even a chance encounter with Rodolphus Ross he did not dread, for the officer had not been apprised of his identity on the night he had summoned him to search for the escaped Espey masquerading under the name of Larrabee.

The abrupt pause, the introverted look, the sudden recollection advertised in unmistakable characters upon his unguarded face, did not escape Kenniston’s observation, now keen and all on the alert. For his heart was in this reprisal. If he had had naught to gain and much to risk, indeed much of certain loss, he would have pursued this injury to its ultimate and bitterest requital. All that was manly in him — his courage, his pugnacity, his tenaciousness, his self-respect, his vehement, insistent, vigorous personality, that could neither make nor keep covenant with concession, compromise, or defeat — rose to the occasion. He had cursed in his heart the lukewarmness of the authorities who had opined that the mountaineers were mighty rough folks, mighty hard to catch, lived in a mighty difficult country, and who offered him the half-veiled advice that they were mighty bad to run against, in lieu of the formulated and disciplined suspicions which he had expected, the canvassing of possible “fire-bugs,” involving as sequence the search warrants for portable property and warrants for arrest, indictments and other fierce and formidable processes of the law, executed with full intent and expectation.

Here was a clue, — the first; and fortunately it had fallen into his own hands. However, it behooved him to be cautious, or the suggestion might be of as little ultimate value as if the intimation were already given to the turbulent, ill-advised, precipitate deputy, or to his unsanguine, dubious, dilatory principal, with his wise saws about the lack of prudence involved in running against mountain folks, who were mighty hard to catch in the wilds of their difficult country.

Now and again the family of Captain Lucy had had an intimation of how pleasant Mr. Kenniston could be when he chose. It was reserved for Jasper Larrabee to experience the fascination of the full and ripened flavor, the bouquet, so to speak, of his geniality and good will. A second rapid covert survey from that altered point of view which one is apt to adopt when a personal interest looms in the background convinced Kenniston that his visitor was no fool. Although he intended to drop the subject for the present, he did not quit it abruptly.

“ I was in hopes you could name some suspicious characters, or had heard some threatening talk, or ” —

Once more he saw from his visitor’s face that, inadvertently, he had again struck the nail on the head. His secret self-applause aided his self-denial in relinquishing so promising a line of investigation. The man must be made to talk freely, to disclose ; his confidence must be secured.

“ I have had heavy losses in this matter, and the officers seem of mighty little account. Every now and then I hope I ’ll hear of something some other way. I ’m afraid to build again unless I know the fire-bug is somewhere else, or what I ’ve done to set people against me.”

Larrabee’s face was at once softened and troubled. “ Burn his shanty every time he gits it started,” quoth Espey. And he that would work ill to one man would work ill to another : witness his own plight. His conscience began to stir. If, he thought, the whiskey tax were not in itself so tyrannical, so impracticable and obnoxious a thing, he might have admitted for the nonce that moonshining was in itself wrong.

Kenniston’s eyes were studying his unconscious countenance. “Well,” he said suddenly, “ since it’s nothing about my affairs, what can I do for you? Won’t you have a chair ? ”

Larrabee shook his head silently. He stood for a few moments undecided. It might seem that his enthusiasm, so ruthlessly dragged down to earth, might hardly make shift to rise again ; but it was strong of wing, as behooves that ethereal essence, and in Ins ignorant assumptions he thought that he had seen a sign in the heavens, a sign for him. The fervor of all that he had half doubting believed, and half believing doubted, fired his pulses once more. He cared naught for Espey and his troublous usurpations, the officer of the law, the moonshiner and his deadly feud, the incendiary, the necessity of heed to his words. He cared for naught under the moon. Once more his face had that illumined, exalted expression. As he leaned suddenly forward, with a keen anxiety, and said, “ Air ye ’quainted with the stars by name, bein’ a book-l’arned man ? ” Kenniston had a swift doubt of his sanity.

“ Yes,” he replied. And after a pause he asked the counter-question, “Are you interested in the stars ? ”

But Larrabee, still under the influence of the strong excitement that possessed him, did not answer directly.

“ I kin read, but I hain’t got but one book. The teacher what Famed me ter read ’lowed ez the stars air named ; they air numbered in a book. Hev ye l’arned sech ? ”

“ Oh yes ; I have studied astronomy,” replied Kenniston capably. “ I know their names.”

“ I know them ; I dunno thar names,” said Larrabee, making a definite distinction. “ That’s the reason I kem ter youuns, hearin’ ez ye air a book-l’arned man.”

He turned his head and looked out into the night as he stood on the threshold. The mists had gone their ways. The clouds were far in the west. Above all, the clear, sombre field of the sky was thickly bespangled with stars, chill, keenly glittering, for below the night was very dark.

“ Thar ’s a new one,” he declared excitedly, “ a new one never viewed afore ! I seen it kindled up a matter of three week ago, three week an’ better, an’ it’s thar now ! ”

Kenniston sat in silent amazement, looking steadily at him.

“ Kem out! ” Larrabee insisted, in tones strangely urgent. “ Kem out an’ see ! ”

Some subtle monition apprised Kenniston that there was something in the man’s disclosure withheld ; that it was not merely to bring his book-learning to bear upon the array of the stars that he was asked to step out of his door at this hour of the night. How often he had heard, as the climax of a feud, of a man in these mountains being summoned on some pretext out of his door to meet a murderous bullet fired by an enemy hidden in the dark! He was momentarily ashamed of this recollection as he glanced at the surveyor asleep close at hand; as he heard the rhythmic beat of feet on the shaking, ill-laid floor, and the patting of hands as some jovial young blade danced a “ breakdown ” in one of the workmen’s shanties to the strumming of the banjo, finding this far more congenial an occupation than shoving the jack plane.

Nevertheless, he had enemies, virulent, unscrupulous, powerful, as his short stay here might seem to attest, and what strange, fantastic vagary was this touching a new star ! He would not refuse ; that would impugn his courage even to himself, and he Held it dear; and as he looked at Larrabee’s face with its eversmiling eyes, despite the intimation of something withheld, of trafficking with a mere subterfuge, he doubted as causeless his prudence. Moreover, this was a man of whom he must keep track, of whom he must know more. He was looking about the room as he rose. “ Wait a minute,” he said. “ I have a strong glass here that may be of use.”

The door of the maligned monkey stove standing ajar emitted a ruddy glow of embers upon the yellow pine walls of the room, and toned down the white glare of the kerosene lamp. A deep, restful red hue might have attracted the eye from the further side amongst the shadows, as Kenniston tossed a rug upon a chair aside to obscure a quick search through his valise. A pernicious habit, that of carrying his pistols at the bottom of his luggage, amongst his clean shirts, and he promised himself this should be the end of it. At the moment that he thrust the revolver into his pistol-pocket he picked up the field-glass from the cot. “ Here it is,” he said, and he followed his guest out of the door and into the dusky night.

It was still all vibrant with the twanging drone of the cicada and the windy note of the booming frogs. The air, damp and of clarified freshness, was pervaded with indeterminate fragrance, the blent perfume of some flower and the pungent aroma of weed and shrub and the balsamic fir. A cluster of great trees rose just outside of the little shell, and though many a star shone down in the interstices of the black fibrous foliage, Larrahee led the way out beyond them and into an open space. It was nearer the other cottages instead of further away, as Kenniston had half expected. The suspicion, the half-dormant fear, the doubt in His mind, were giving place anew to his determination to keep his hand on this man, to win his confidence or to surprise his secret. All those genial arts of ingratiation at his command were once more brought into play. It was he who introduced the subject of their mission, as they paused on a slight eminence, with a clear view of the great fields of heaven before them.

“ Now which is the star that you want to know more about ? ” he demanded, lifting the glass with a free gesture, and adjusting it to his eye.

“ Don’t ye see nuthin’ oncommon ? ” the mountaineer asked, in a tense voice.

The strained tone struck Kenniston’s attention, and he lowered the glass and looked through the baffling darkness at his companion, whose form could be discriminated only by some line sense from the surrounding darkness by an effect of solidity, given one could hardly say how.

Kenniston, the glass swaying useless in his hand, gazed upward once more.

“No, I can’t say I do,” he replied wonderingly.

Larrabee suddenly came up close to him, taking him by the arm.

“Now, hyar, to’des the east, an’ yit a leetle to’des the north, sorter slanchwise to’des Big Injun Mounting, setting a mite ter the west from that, an’ plumb west from Chillowee, a bright, bright star,— with,” he added, in a surprised tone, as if he had not before discerned this, “ a sorter silver shine onto it.”

Kenniston laughed slyly in his sleeve. One can hardly better appreciate the immense distance that mechanical appliance has brought man from his normal state of natural, unassisted faculties than in the effort to point out, with such accuracy as to enable another to distinguish, an object in those fair and foreign fields of heaven, by the unaided means of the index finger. A suffusion of self-gratulatory pride is apt to overspread the consciousness, the unit assuming the credit of all that the genius of invention has achieved in the generic name of mankind. Kenniston had not even a slight expectation of being able to distinguish the particular star, but the affectation of effort, in his own interests, in some sort constrained his will. He looked about the skies with that vague sense of recollection which animates one who turns the leaves of a volume written in a half-forgotten language. He had not been the familiar of the stars. His choicest ambitions had lifted him no further than a reasonably safe height for an attic, or those fantastic simulations of turrets with which the new architecture apes haud passibus œquis the old. He had naught in common with the full-pulsed, aspiring audacity of those architects of eld who builded in the plain of Shinar; his was but a low-studded Babel. He had not cared for a higher outlook, and his building had no definite designs touching heaven. It had been so long since he had regarded the upper atmosphere other than barometrically that he hardly made shift to see the Swan arch her snowy neck from those great lakes of ether, whose indented shores seemed marked and foliage-fringed by the wooded summits of the Great Smoky Mountains. The assertive brilliance of Lyra he noted near the meridian, with the harpstrings all vibrant, doubtless, with that music of the spheres which we are told by the scientist is no longer a mere figment of poesy. The Cor Caroli gleamed pure and splendid amongst the mists of a struggling recollection. And where was Scorpio ? —how low in the sky, how far to the southwest, how near to its setting ! Through a water-gap of Chilhowee, cloven to the very heart of the range, he marked the gleaming coils. Of strangely melancholy intimations were the stars, seen so far through the steep wooded defile, dark and rugged on either hand; but he remembered only the relation of its early setting and the season, for it was near the end of September. How little building weather the year might spare him yet! How heavy the rains of to-day, and the west still harbored portents ! Unless he relinquished all and left the field, baffled and beaten, he must have the incendiary behind the bars. To jail a suspect, at all events, would intimidate the lawless population, and point the moral of Hands off! ”

“ I don’t see it,” he said, reverting to the prosecution of his intention to win the mountaineer’s secret information as to the origin of the fire. “ I ‘m sorry I can’t see it, Mr. — Excuse me, what did you say your name is ? ”

His visitor had not said, but all thrown off his guard the young man replied promptly, “ Lar’bee, — Jasper Lar’bee. Ef ye look jes’ a leetle ter the right of that thar batch o’ stars ez ’pears some similar ter a kyart-wheel — He raised once more the futile inefficiency of his index finger.

But Kenniston was not looking. This name, — he placed it at once. In the short interview which he had had with the deputy sheriff touching the incendiary, without whose apprehension he feared to recommence the building, it had recurred repeatedly to Rodolphus Ross’s lips coupled with many an imprecation. Kenniston had paid scant heed at the time to the story of the search for Espey, of the pretended arrest, of the escape of the supposed Larrabee and the inference of some crime which his flight fostered. It had all happened during his absence from the Cove, and shortly before the beginning of the building of the hotel. He could not conceive of any reasons for connecting one with the other; but this man indubitably knew something of the crime ; his long and mysterious disappearance had baffled all the devices of the officers, and surely it was a strange subterfuge which had brought him hither. Strange to the minds of others as well, for sundry figures were detached now and again from the illumined thresholds near at hand ; presently the foreman had joined the two, and Several of the workmen approached, all pausing at intervals and craning their necks up toward the sky, having noticed their scrutiny of it, and expectant of some lusus naturœ, — comet, or aurora borealis, or other phenomenon the observation of which might serve to break the monotony. The resonant tone of the banjo now and again sounded loud in the damp air, as the musician who _ carried it under his arm jostled against one of the others. Their attitudes and faces expressed an alert curiosity, for they were not altogether indistinguishable ; the two star-gazers having insensibly changed their positions, and come within the line of light falling from one of the open doors.

“ Some ter the right o’ that batch o’ stars ez be some similar ter a kyartwheel,” repeated Larrabee urgently.

“ I don’t know which you mean,” replied Kenniston, drawing himself back to the subject with difficulty.

“ Don’t ye view one ez ye never viewed afore?” demanded Jasper breathlessly. “ Ef ye know ’em, ye air ’bleeged ter see that thar one air strange ! ”

“Mr. Jackson,” —Kenniston turned to the foreman, — “ do you see anything unusual in that sky ? ”

The foreman answered with a prompt and businesslike negative, and then appealed in turn to the workmen. None of them could perceive aught amiss, although they all turned about and critically surveyed the majesty of the heavens.

“ It’s a new star,” protested Larrabee, unconsciously adopting the scientific term of description. “ I seen it kindle up myself ’bout three weeks ago.”

There was an astounded silence; then a resonance broke out abruptly as the young musician smote his bullet head with the instrument, apparently inadvertently, but with the view of intimating to his fellows that all was not accurately adjusted in the cranium of their queer visitor.

Kenniston hesitated for a moment. There lay in his mind the residuum, so to speak, of an impression that new stars or temporary stars are not of infrequent occurrence in the economy of worlds, rating time by the long astral lengths. He could not say at once, — such scant commerce he had had with the stars of late years, to be sure. His mind had reverted instantly to the question upon what pretext he should seek to detain the man. He only saw rather than noted the workmen slowly turning aside, the long lane of yellow light streaming through the door, the lustrous mirror-like suggestions in the darkness hard by where the pools lurked and the frogs were still croaking, the outlines of the clustering roofs of the other little buildings, shadowy in the deeper shadow, the dense woods surrounding all, and above the great amphitheatre of the mountains on every side. The voice of the foreman recalled him: —

“ That’s a queer customer. First crank I’ve seen here.”

“Where is he?” cried Kenniston, with a start, the freedom of the criticism notifying him of the absence of its subject. “ Stop him ! Call him ! Hold on to him ! ”

But the effort was vain. Larrabee had departed as suddenly, as tracklessly, as if the night had swallowed him up.

XVII.

It was a buoyant, elated spirit that Jasper Larrabee bore as he slipped swiftly away through the darkness and the woods, unaware of the sudden vehement search for him, unhearing the hue and cry. He had put his discovery to the test, — the most searching that he could devise. And not the man learned in letters, who even knew the stars by name, not the clear-headed, prosperous, efficient foreman, not the humbler handicraftsmen, could see that gracious, splendid stellular presence still shining, — shining down into the wilderness, doubtless with some message, some token, some personal relation, that would be in due season made known. He had no uncertainties ; he had said to himself that if it were invisible to others he would accept it as a revelation to himself. For had he not seen it even as it first kindled in the blank spaces of the midnight sky ?

He felt with a sort of surprise that his limbs were trembling as he went, his breath was short; more than once he paused, with a reeling sense as if he should fall, and he beheld the summit line of demarcation where the dark woods touched the clear sky describe a long curve upward, and once more sink to its place. He had not known the physical exhaustion that ensues upon strong and long-continued mental excitement. Beyond the moment’s impatient recognition he gave it no heed. He was glad, glad beyond all power of analysis, expectant, breathless, his eyes continually fixed upon the star, unmindful whither his failing feet carried him. He passed without a thought the door of the store of the Lost Time mine, from which so lately he had escaped as it were with his life in his hand. He might have seen, if he had chosen, the twinkle of Cornelia Taft’s fire through the chinking, as she nodded on the hearth and vainly waited for her father’s return to Supper. He heard naught,—no voice from the woods, no stir of leaf, no sigh of wind, no lapsing of the alien sheets of water, not even the full rush of the stream from the portal of the Lost Time mine, loud, sinister, seemingly charged with cavernous echoes from those hidden haunted recesses whence it came, wild, turbulent, with thrice its normal volume hurling out into the black night.

Only once he paused. The unseen air and the invisible moisture were at their jugglery again, weaving from nothingness wondrous symmetries of scrolls tenuous to the eye, marvelous winged suggestions endowed with the faculty of flight and airy poise, graces of fabric, and tissues, fold on fold of impalpable pearl-tinted consistencies ; now a floating film passed before the star; again it shone out more splendid still, and anon dimly through the gathering haze, and so was lost to sight.

Larrabee stood for a time spellbound, still gazing up into heaven. But winds were astir in the region of the clouds. Heavy purple masses, with here and there flocculent white drifts, and showing lines of white at their verges, were spreading over the sky; the temperature had fallen suddenly ; he was shivering. Vagrant gusts seemed to issue from defiles of the mountain, and he heard the awakening of the pines. Out of sight of the star his flagging energies failed. The definite realization of his fatigue, his hunger, his faintness, pressed upon his aroused senses. He could hardly support his tottering limbs to the door of the Host Time mine, and drag himself up on the rocks, out of the reach of the water, to rest, as he waited till the clouds should pass, till the sight of the star should be renewed to his longing gaze. Even in its eclipse, in a certain yearning sense of bereavement, in his disappointment, he had a patience and calm acquiescence begotten of confidence. For he should see it again. Was it not his own, his very own, charged with some unimagined significance to him ? He shifted his posture once, reckoning upon its position in the sky, that it might not fail his sight the moment the baffling clouds withdrew. He was conscious of a high degree of happiness despite his tremulous thrills of suspense. He gazed upward, as he reclined on the ledge of rock, with smiling eyes and a heart full of deep content. He had gone far enough within to have an upward view through the jaggecl portal of roughhewn rocks. Beyond their edges the sky seemed of lighter tint, so black it was within. He could mark here how the clouds made sail, how swiftly the wind sped them. He watched a section of a branch close at hand sway in sight, and swing back on the wind, and once more wave, nodding, plumelike, into view. He heard the sharp bark of a fox outside in the woods ; it roused faraway haying of drowsy hounds, and again all was still, except the reverberation of the water loud against the echoing walls of the darksome place. The sound affected his nerves; he was dizzy for a moment. Then something cold, clammy, suddenly struck him in the face. His heart seemed to stand still for a moment with the recollection of the spectral terrors of the place. It came again and again, and the air was vaguely fanned about his brow before he recognized the noiseless flight of bats on their way to the outer darkness. He lay back upon the ledge, finding a solace in the mere posture of rest in his extreme fatigue, and once more watched the jagged black portal and the purple clouds with their hoary drifts, as in endless unbroken folds they rolled before the serene white splendors of that wondrous star. Again and again he would lift himself upon his elbow, fancying that the cloud textures waxed thin, and that presently, when they should fall away from before it, he would behold anew the sidereal incandescent glory that meant so much, that should mean more to him. Not once did his faith fail him. Not once did he doubt that the white fires of this star which none else could see were miraculously kindled and charged with some deep significance for him, with the vouchsafed will of God. For were not stars messengers of the olden time ? Had he not read of one, supremely blessed and brilliant, which had led men, the wisest men, to the cradled Christ ? As he lay back in the dense darkness, with the gathering clouds outside, and the air freighted with the sense of black noiseless invisible wings of creatures of ill favor and ill omen, he seemed to have a vision of that guiding star, —not a chill splendid crystalline glitter like his own, high, high in the sky, but low down in the dark east, and of a soft supernal silver sheen in the purple shadowy mist above the shadowy purple hills of Judea, that stretched out in ever-lengthening perspectives, as it fared on and slowly on its mystic way, for Bethlehem might still be far to seek.

And suddenly, with a start, Larrabee became aware that, it was a real light at which he was gazing far down in the Lost Time mine. He had slept he knew not how long, nor in what danger, for the lantern whose starry lustre shone so far in the dark cavernous depths was swinging in the hands of one of two men who must have passed him as he lay dreaming and unconscious. He hardly dared move at first, so far those slanting, divergent rays extended from the white focus into the darkness. He lay still, struggling for a moment with the idea of the traditional spectres of the place, whose grisly renown had served to make it so solitary. It was the lantern which proved a redoubtable exorcist. The sight of the little mundane contrivance appealed to his logical faculty as no mere theory of the impossibility of spectres could have done. He lifted himself cautiously on his elbow, and gazed down the vistas of the gloomy place with a suspicious, inquisitive worldly pulse beating in every vein. These were men in truth; and what was their mission here? One of them was singularly gesticulatory of manner. The other slouched heavily. It was the latter who had just lighted the lantern, for he was evidently throwing away a match, an article which the Lost Time store had made common in the Cove. Suddenly they were joined by a third dark figure, somehow detached from the darkness,for Larrabee could hardly have said whence lie had approached, and who turned with a light, lithe motion, swinging to his shoulder an implement which the thickset man had handed him. It was a pickaxe. How often, how often Larrabee had heard its vibrations ring through these storied depths while he threaded the dark tunnel to the still, and shivered at the thought of the two dead miners digging and digging the graves these thirty years for their hones which only the waters had buried !

The lantern swayed, the shadows all flickered, the group was on the move. Larrabee sprang hastily to his feet to follow".

He could not easily judge how far the feeble glimmer led them, so rugged and winding was the way. Once, as the submerged mouth of a shaft yawned suddenly before his feet, he hesitated, half deterred ; he was fain to skulk with the skulking shadows, lest the light should reveal his presence, and thus the dangers which they braved menaced him doubly. He marveled, as he noted that the halffallen timbers in a cross-cut through which they passed barely supported the masses of earth which any jar might dislodge, that they dared the possibilities of the place. Everywhere was the sound of water working its secret will still on the ruins that it had made, and its tone added to the awe of the place, and the desolation, and the darkness, and the eerie effect of the bats that flew after the lantern and smote blindly against it.

The light was set down presently, and as the men seemed stirring about their work Larrabee ventured to approach nearer behind a pile of broken rock in the darkness, and mopped the cold perspiration from his brow. He caught His breath at the sight of the faces which the lantern revealed.

For they were all recruited from his mother’s hearth. Some crazy folly, doubtless, of old man Haight had drawn him here. He had been one of the miners before that catastrophe which had closed the work forever; Larrabee remembered in what deep, blood-curdling tones he was wont to curse the Lost Time mine. And his daughter Jerusha’s husband, — it had always been a marvel where and how he obtained the whiskey he so indubitably consumed; perhaps, in consideration of his age and infirmities, Mrs. Larrabee furnished a too ample allowance of liquor to old man Haight, who, for services rendered in this wild enterprise, furnished his son-inlaw.

“ We-uns hev been toler’ble good customers o’ the Lost Time still,” Larrabee muttered sarcastically.

And there was Jack Espey! The sanity of his presence here was easily demonstrable; nowhere else could he so safely be. How he had chanced to cooperate in this strange work with the dotard and the sot was soon explained.

“Gimme a holt o’ that thar grub,” he said gruffly, with a look of poignant hunger on his thin face.

Old Haight, with a trembling, deprecatory expression and shaking hand, made haste to give him a small basket, of a queer shape and aspect which bespoke the work of the Indians of Quallatown. The young man eagerly thrust his hand into its narrow mouth, and as he drew forth its meagre contents gave vent to his disappointment.

“ My Lord ! ” he exclaimed, “ is that all ? An’ ye expec’ me ter kem hyar night arter night — from — from ” — the effort of his heavy flight of imagination showed in his face — “ from ’way over yander whar I live now, an’ help ye dig an’ sech. an’ gin me secli forage ter work on ez that! ” He pointed contemptuously at the food, albeit his mouth was full.

“ Now, now. Jack, now, bubby, lemme tell you,” expostulated the old man, his jaw quivering painfully as he spoke, and his wrinkled face showing, in the glimmer of the lantern, at once grotesque and piteous, encircled as it was by the brilliant hues of a little shawl of Mrs. Larrabee’s, in which his head was tied up for protection against the weather, and which was surmounted by his hat. “ Ye dunno how darned hard it war ter git that much. This hyar Henrietty Timson hev got us down on half rations, mighty short commons. ’T ain’t like ’t war whenst you-uns lived with us, Jack. Oh my ! Oh my, no ! ” and he shook his queerly upholstered head as he sat quaking and shivering on a ledge of the rock. He impressed Larrabee as much out of place, — so habituated was he to the sight of him in the chimney corner, — as the oven, or pot, or crane, or any other naturalized appurtenance of the fireside might have been. He let his veinous old shaking hands fall on his knees with a gesture deeply significant of grief. “ I wisht ter Gawd,” he cried, “ ez S’briny war hyar ! ”

He pronounced her name as if she were a sort of minor providence, as indeed she had been to him.

“ Leetle ez ye hed, ye mought hev brung it sooner,” grumbled Jack, stuffing the half of a very fat, very heavy biscuit into his mouth.

“ Law, Jack,” cried the old man, “ we-uns air plumb ’feared ter leave the house sooner, — even arter all war bedded up for the night. That thar ’oman hev got her pryin’ nose in every mortal thing; ’pears ter me the longest, sharpest nose I ever seen,” he added maliciously, and with sudden sprightly interest, “ ain’t it, Tawm ? ”

His fellow-sufferer from its pointed inquisitiveness had seemed about to fall asleep in a heavy, shapeless lump, but he roused himself at this to add his testimony with some sincere acridity.

“ Longes’ an’ sharpes’ I ever seen,” he protested thickly, “ an’ I hev known ’em p’inted an’ drawn out to de-straetion.” His snore followed so promptly that one might have doubted whether he had spoken at all; it presented the phenomenon of a waking parenthesis, as it were, in the midst of the somnolent text.

I tell ye, it’s good fur S’briny ter go, ter let we-uns savor how we miss her,” said the old man. “ Sech a house, Jack, sech quar’lin’ an’ scufflin’ an’ tormentin’, f’om mornin’ till night, — crowdin’ Me up on the h’a’thstone, an’ shovin’ my cheer, an’ talkin’ ’bout useless cumberers, whenst. I hev been treated with seek respec ’ by S’briny Lar’bee ez ef I hed been her own dad, stiddier jes’ her husband’s step-dad, — sech re-spec’ an’ hot vittles, an’ the fus’ sarved, an’ the bes’ o’ everything ! ” His old face flushed with the recollection of the recent indignities offered him. “ The pa’son tells ye ter lean on the Lord. Ef ye ain’t got the grace ter do that, S’briny Lar’bee’s a mighty good substitute ! ”

For the life of him, Jasper Larrabee could not harden his heart.

“ Her pet tur - rkey air dead,” old man Haight presently observed disconnectedly.

Glad of it,” said Jack callously. “ I never seen a beast so pompered, an’ fairly hanker ter git stepped on, forever flusterin’ ’roun’ the floor underfoot.”

“ She ’ll be powerful sorry. She sot a heap o’ store by it, an’ doctored it cornsider’ble. She ’lowed it bed the quinsy.” Then, after a pause, “ Whenst I gits my money hack,” said the old man meditatively, “ I be goin’ ter buy S’briny Lar’bee sutliin’ ez will s’prise her, — I dunno what. I studies on it some mighty nigh every day. A spry young filly, mebbe, or a good cow an’ calf, — I dunno. I’d gin her the money, ef she would n’t be sure ter fool it away on them wuthless triflin’ cattle o’ chil’n an’ folks she contrives fur all the time. I ’d gin S’briny half o’ the cold cash, an’ ennyhow I lay off ter spend half fur a presint fur her.”

Espey, his energies recruited by food, and perhaps willing to postpone the evil hour of shoveling and digging, looked up with a satiric eye and a rallying laugh.

“ Whar ’s my sheer, ef ye be goin’ ter gin Miss Lar’bee haffen the money ? Ye ’lowed Tawni hed hed his pay in whiskey,” — he cast a side glance at the bloated slumbering face and collapsed figure in the shadow, — “ an’ he’s hed a plenty, too, fur he’s nuthin’ but a cag o’ liquor set a-goin’ on two legs; but I ’m durned ef I ’ll take my pay out in Mis’ Timson’s sour yeast an’ raw dough.” He twirled the empty basket over contemptuously. "Ye ’lowed that night, three weeks ago, whenst I — ye — whenst we run on one another, an’ s’prisod one another, ez ye’ pay me solid silver ef I would n’t tell nobody, but holp ye ; now did n’t ye ? ”

Espey’s tone was so obviously that of one who speaks in flagrant jest that Larrabee perceived he gave the unknown enterprise no serious support or credence, and that he was only utilizing some preposterous delusion of the old man touching his work in the Lost Time mine to secure food to sustain him while he evaded the pursuit of the law.

“ Enough! ” screamed the old man shrilly, and Larrabee recognized the clamors of the queer cracked voice which he had been wont shudderingly to mark in the tunnel that led to the still. “ Ain’t I done tole ye what I ain’t never tole no other livin’ man— I don’t count Tawm — ’t eighty-seben dollars ! Yes, sir, nigh on ter a hundred, what I hed done sold my cabin an’ lan’ fur on Big Injun Mounting whenst Ikem overhyar ter settle, — eighty-seben dollars in hard silver.” He broke off abruptly. Then, in the deep, hollow, blood-curdling tone which Larrabee had so often heard about the fireside, he cursed the Lost Time mine. His excitement was painful to witness, as Larrabee, still looking round the pile of broken rock, noted bis feverish illumined eyes, the flush on his withered parchment-like cheek, the aimlessness and the quaking of his fluttering nerveless hand. Espey was gazing at him calmly, his face lighted by the lantern placed on the ground between them, and evidently believing that not a syllable he uttered had any foundation in fact.

“ ’T war the day o’ the floodin’ o’ the mine,” old Haight mouthed and gesticulated vehemently. “ Every durned thing went wrong that day! I war hyar a-workin’. I hed worked in mines over in Car’liny, an’ war ekal ter all. I war toler’ble young an’ nimble, — knowed ter be ez nimble ez a painter ! An’ one o’ them durned buzzards workin’ of the windlass drapped the whole contrivance, winch, rope, bucket, man, an’ all, down inter the bottom o’ the shaft; an’ they could n’t make the man answer, an’ ’lowed he war kilt. An’ I — the devil’s own fool — mus’ ups an’ volunteer ter go down an’ git the windlass an’ let ’em hoist it out, an’ then let down the bucket agin an’ fetch up the man — (I furgits his name, dad burn him! — Tom, Jim, Pete, cuss him, whatever he be!) An’ ez they war a sort o’ harnessin’ me up with ropes under my arms an’ around my middle, I felt my leetle bag o’ money a-poppin’ ’bout in my pocket, an’ ’peared ter me it mought pop out down in that deep onhandy shaft. An’ I handed it ter the foreman ter keep fur me in his pocket, — he war a clever trusted man ; I never tole the t’others, kase they war toler’ble hard cases, an’ some men would kill a man fur a dollar an’ a half; an’ bless Gawd — eighty-seben dollars ! An’ down I goes ! I hed about teehed bottom when — hell broke loose ! I ’lowed I hearn thunder: ’t war the water on a plumb tear, breakin’ down the walls an’ cavortin’ like a herd o’ wild cattle through the mine. Sech screeehin’s ! The men ez belt the rope drapped it on my head an’ run fur their lives ! ”

With open mouth and shaking jaw, he rose up, and gazed eagerly about, while Espey wearily yawned and passed his hands across his eyes.

“It bust through about thar.” He pointed about in real or fancied recognition of the course of the flood. “ But over yander — the whole thing hev fell down an’ caved in sence then, mighty nigh — ’t war higher ’n the level o’ the overflow, an’ I stayed down thar in the shaft dry ez a bone. I stayed two days along o’ that dead man. I furgits his name,” he broke off in peevish irritation.

He sat down, readjusted his plaid shawl about his head, surmounted it again with his big broad hat, and recommenced : —

“Waal, they ’lowed at fust they’d work the mine agin, — did n’t know what the damage war ; an’ ez they war pokin’ ’bout, somebody membered me, an’ when they fished me out’n the shaft I hed these hyar jiggets.” He held up his shaking hands, and looked in exasperation from one to the other. “ Some calls it the palsy, but the doctor, he ’lowed it kem from the narvous shock. An’ the foreman, lie hed done hed ter git drowned with my leetle bag o’ money in his pocket.” He rose to his feet, with a sudden steady blazing fire in his eyes. “ But it’s silver, — eighty — seben — dollars ! ” He pronounced the words as if they expressed the wealth of the Indies. “ They air silver, — silver metal. Water can’t hurt ’em, an’ the leetle leather bag kep’ ’em from scatterin’. The foreman ’s got ’em in his pocket. Mebbe he hain’t got no pocket by this time, but he hain’t got rid o’ all his bones. The money ’ll be nigh his bones, an’ I be goin’ ter foller the wash o’ that flood, afore the walls fell in on it, till I find ’em.”

There was something pathetic to Jasper Larrabee’s sympathetic gaze in the record of the gradual failure of the old man’s mental powers registered on the walls. He could easily distinguish, of course, the difference in the work wrought by numbers and with the expectation of valuable ore and this unique subterranean burrowing with only the object of Haight’s search in view. But at first accepted methods of mining had been held in regard with a due consideration of safety. The excavations had been carefully timbered, the débris of the ancient lumber serving for the purpose; the nature of the earth and rock all capably recognized either in the avoidance of obstacles or the seizure of advantage ; the exact location of an old cross-cut definitely ascertained and intersected by the new tunnel, and utilized to further him on the way to some objective point, doubtless once definite in his mind, but now hazy and intermittent, or possibly lost altogether, for here and there, evidently at random, great vaults had been hollowed out and abandoned, and for a long time every precaution or thought of safety had been discarded. His plan and its feasibility were gone, and only his inadequate intention remained.

Larrabee started violently as the walls rang suddenly with the weird old voice, which, with its keen, false intonation, had so often struck terror to the stout hearts of the moonshiners of the Lost Time still. It was a voice of insistent command. He was urging his comrades up to work, and presently the regular strokes of the pickaxe wielded by the stalwart “ Tawm ” set the echoes of the place to a hollow, melancholy iteration dreary to hear, and dismally blent with the rush of the cruel torrent. Espey’s stroke seemed, in comparison, incidental and ineffective; but albeit both men worked apparently with a will, it was evidently quite at random, obeying implicitly now and again a gesture or command given in pursuance of some weak, wavering intention, and changed in a moment.

The accident which had put the secret into Larrabee’s hands seemed to him now so natural that he marveled that it had not been earlier revealed. But doubtless the vocation of the lost miners had served to connect the stroke of the pickaxe with their gruesome fate, and thus the very fact of the sound, which must otherwise have betrayed the enterprise, aided the spectral traditions and the constant avoidance of the place to preserve it. Would Espey have dared, he asked himself, to venture within, had he not feared the living more than the dead ? And but for his own recognition of the humble lantern and its necessarily human uses he would, for fear of the spectral miners, hardly have tracked the old miner to his new lead.

And suddenly, with the very thought, notwithstanding the perfectly natural solution of the mystery, he was solicitous as to the means of departure. He could not wait to follow that feeble lantern far enough in the background to insure his invisibility. He would not issue upon them now and advertise his discovery, and dismay the old dotard with his hopeless scheme. “ I don’t want to torment the pore old man.” he said. He felt a keen thrill of savage joy to have discovered Espey’’s lair, but he would need some thought secretly to entrap him. “ Fur ye air a mighty slick shirk, brother Jack,” he said, with scorn. He was feeling some matches in his pockets, and judging of their number. Should they fail him before he reached the outer air, he could step aside and wait till the men should pass with the lantern. Its glimmer served now as long as the passage was comparatively straight; when it turned, himself out of the possibility of view, he struck the first match. The way was shorter than he had fancied. His store was not yet exhausted when he felt the warmer temperature from without, and saw the jagged outline of the portal and heard the melancholy dash of the rain; for it was once more “ falling weather,” and the sky was cloaked and gray.

As he hesitated without, his mind intent upon Espey and the incidents of his career since he had been among them, there came to him the thought of the barn in which his whilom friend had been wont to spend so many idle and meditative hours. A good refuge, to be sure, for a fugitive from the law. The idea of comforts allured him as he recollected the great fragrant elastic masses of hay. A hiding-place as well. Here even Henrietta Timson would hardly find him, for the rotting ladder, from which many a rung was missing, afforded scant footing for a barn swallow, or a flying squirrel, or an athlete like himself or his friend. Sleep would recruit his energies, quiet solace his mind, a vacant interval of time clarify his intentions and fortify his resolves. He started up the mountain briskly ; the thought of home, even in this humble, secret, half-outcast guise, warmed his heart. He did not feel the rain dash in his face. A prescience of October was unheeded in the melancholy cadences of the midnight wind. He hardly noted the deep gloom of the Cove, where an owl was wailing at intervals, and whence all the orange-tinted lights had vanished. As the chill of the failing season struck him, he shivered, but unconsciously. He had forged on past the Lost Time store almost to the crest of the ridge, where the homeward way diverged, when suddenly a dull subterranean thunder shook the air, and the earth seemed to tremble. He paused in astonishment.

“ Why, they air a-blastin’ down thar in the Lost Time mine. Espey ought n’t ter let two bereft folks tech sech ez that; ’t ain’t safe.”

Then he reflected that Espey himself had doubtless superintended the charges with due regard to their safety and his own. Nevertheless, he shook his head as he stood looking over his shoulder into the blank, unresponsive darkness. He heard no more, and presently he turned again and went his homeward way in the dark persistent dripping of the early autumn rain.

Charles Egbert Craddock.